Case study: Travis Perkins Group

The Travis Perkins Group enables staff to take up childcare vouchers, payroll giving and a cycle-to-work scheme through a salary sacrifice arrangement.

However, the firm decided to adopt its own term, ‘salary exchange’, to describe tax-efficient benefits. Claire Williams, group reward manager, explains: “We didn’t like the term salary sacrifice because it conjures up the wrong images.” Last year, the company also introduced a savings club and discounted shopping vouchers, which staff can purchase from their net pay.

But Travis Perkins’ benefits provider, Jardine Lloyd Thompson, advised the company that it should not use salary exchange to describe both sets of perks because the term was becoming synonymous with salary sacrifice and was distinct from salary deduction. As a result, the firm called all perks that go through payroll ‘Building your Benefits’. The differences between the tax-efficient perks and those that staff can purchase from their take home pay are also clearly communicated to employees.

“Building your Benefits incorporates salary exchange and salary deduction. We have given the scheme its own name for our own purposes. We wanted to avoid confusion or prevent us from becoming misleading [to staff],” says Williams.